Primary Tools & Materials:INK, DIGITAL PRINTER

This sparkly mashup is the lovechild of inkjet printed fonts on paper and various colors of ink applied to a rubber stamp. I experimented with six different fonts of varying style and weight and seven different colored inks on my stamp.

I began by stamping on scrap paper a few examples of the Ds I had in my stamp collection. I then scanned them into my computer to get an idea of how large I'd need to print the digital counterparts, and played around in Photoshop with some combinations that looked interesting.

Then I chose the six fonts that created the most interesting combinations with my fancy woodcut-style stamped D, and printed them on a grid on three different colors of paper, and in three colors of printer ink.

Once I paired up my stamp with each variation of the letter and seven colors of ink, I ended up with 90 examples of how these two methods can interact to create interesting letterforms. For the "winner" of this set, I chose the combination of the teal D (in the typeface Input Serif Condensed Black, for those keeping score) overlayed with the gold ink on my stamp, on good old white paper. I thought the offset was beautiful, creating an almost greenish third color, and there's just enough sparkle from the gold to make it interesting. There's also an interesting conversation happening here between present and past - both with the materials being used and the letter styles.

I'm glad I built in multiple iterations into this study. In some cases, I could tell after the very first stamp that the ink I'd chosen wasn't going to work well, (looking at you, purple on blue) so I could switch to another. I could also experiment with how much pressure I put on the stamp, more or less ink, the color and paper combinations, and the positions where I chose to overlay the stamp (my clear stamp base made that so easy!) I also learned that white ink is worthless, at least the kind I had on hand.